In the field of wireless networking, modern mobile stations, such as cell phones or wireless broadband-equipped laptops, typically utilize a radio access network (RAN) to connect to a packet data network (PDN), by which they gain access to hosts on the Internet via Internet Protocol (IP). This connectivity is provided by mobile network operators, which build and maintain networks of radio access points, networking switches and gateways, and high-bandwidth links that are compliant with certain standards. One such standard is called Long-Term Evolution (LTE). The LTE standards are published by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”), a not-for-profit industry consortium.
Mobile stations that provide IP packet-based connectivity are supported by networking gateways that send packets downstream to the mobile stations and receive packets from the mobile stations addressed for upstream network nodes or network nodes on the public Internet. When a gateway informs an inactive mobile station that new packets have arrived for that mobile station, this process is known as paging.